*~*

Damon and I spent the first two days in Nevada being inseparable. We gambled, saw some shows, got stoned, and generally made up for seventy missed years. The third day we had plans to go out to the Grand Canyon. I knew Damon had absolutely no desire to go watch the sunset, but he was going to indulge my artsy side anyway. I cancelled our plans when Kendra shook us awake that morning to inform us that her cousin James had discovered two dead bodies stuffed in a cabinet the night before. It was then I decided that I wanted, no needed, to help with what was going on. I'd come to Vegas with the vague idea that, yes I'd probably end up helping in some minor way, but I wasn't expecting myself to volunteer for it, and I certainly wasn't expecting it to come so soon. 

" I could ask how your cousin ended up finding dead bodies?" It came out surlier than I meant it to. I'm not a morning person, and haven't been since I awoke to the British firing shots on the streets of Boston in the seventeen hundreds.

"He didn't mention it." Kendra just shrugged pleasantly. She's very nice in the mornings, and it annoys me to no end. "He said he was out hunting before he saw all the stuff going on in the house."

I sat up in bed stretching widely. "Back up a sec, hunting? How do you hunt in Vegas?"

"He's a vampire." She rolled her eyes, gesturing towards the bathroom where Damon was in the shower.

"Oh." I didn't try to figure out that family relation at the moment. "So, can I help?"

Kendra looked surprised for a moment before answering. "You want to help?"

"People are dying. Yes I want to help."

A thoughtful look passed over my friends face. She jumped off the bed where she was sitting beside me, and ran out of the room. She came back seconds later holding a pile of stuffed folders, which she deposited next to me on the bed.

"Choose one." She said, doing a poor showgirl impression of displaying the folders.

"What are they?" My hand hovered over the pile.

"Different cases Circle Daybreak's been working on. There've been a lot of unsolved murders of Daybreakers in the past few decades. Occasionally they pull them out of the closet and attempt to solve again, but usually it's to no avail. Last night's murder is another one that looks like it might go unsolved. I d'know but I think you and Damon might be able to solve one if you worked on it." Kendra sighed. "I don't like him that much, but I've heard stories, and apparently he's pretty good at stuff when he puts his mind to it."

I stuck my in the middle of the stack and grabbed a folder. The folder was thin compared to some of the others, but I didn't try to choose another.

"Alex Redfern." Kendra read from over my shoulder. "I remember Ro, talking about that murder."

"He was murdered?" I asked, almost to myself. I grabbed the one of the five papers in the folder and skimmed it through. "This happened in 1975. You really meant 'occasionally', didn't you? He was murdered over in a forest in England. No body, no murder weapon, no nothing."

"Hey," Kendra was carefully examining a picture that had slipped out of the folder. "That looks like Sirius."

"Who?"

"You know Sirius Black, he escaped from prison in England about two years ago, he's one of the two the came over from England. You and Damon slept through introductions. Of course that's probably better, seeing as you two were high as kites and embarrassingly drunk when you came in." Kendra grinned as I swatted at her. "Anyway, this looks like him, and this other boy must be Alex. Ro said something yesterday about someone named Alex being a terror when he was with Sirius. This was probably that Alex."

I nodded as she slipped the picture back in the folder. I'd look at it later. I skimmed the rest of the papers drawing out more information. "He was a vampire."

"Well duh." Kendra said dryly. "The surname Redfern usually equates to that."

"I was just introduced to this world two days ago. Forgive me if I don't remember all the details." I answered in the same tone. "Is this Sirius guy also a vamp?"

"I didn't pick anything up, but that doesn't mean anything. I only probed the surface." I'd learned in the past few days that while Kendra wasn't the strongest witch in other fields, her physic capabilities surpassed anyone I'd ever met. "The other one, Remus, is a werewolf. The full moon controls him completely."

"Interesting characters Europe sent you." I commented.

"Even more interesting reasons." Kendra got a gossipy look on her face. She flopped on her stomach and started to talk nonstop about witches, wizards, and a guy named Voldemort. She gave me what she seemed to think was a brief version, but it truly wasn't. By the time she was done my mind was spinning and all the stuff I'd learned about the Night World started colliding with the things I'd just learned about the wizarding world. Any more of this and I would be totally messed up for the rest of eternity.

"Oh Lord." I borrowed Kendra's favorite expression, as I covered my head with a pillow. "Is there a time when we stop discovering secret societies?"

"D'know." She kicked her feet into the bed. "So, are you gonna take Alex case?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Don't know about Damon, though. I'll talk to him when he gets out of the shower!" I yelled the last part, hoping my boyfriend would catch the hint and stop hogging the hot water. I know he heard me, but he chose not to respond. "I'll start checking some stuff out after breakfast. I think I'll talk to this Sirius guy first…"

*~*

While Damon was dressing that morning I 'borrowed' Kendra's headphones and her India.Arie CD, and with the case folder, went down stairs to the dining hall to eat and do some reading. I'd sorely underestimated the number of pages in the folder, there were more like thirty pages, but because the folder hadn't been touched in some time many of them were stuck together. It took a lot of patience on my part not tear them as I pealed them slowly apart. I couldn't afford to ruin what little information Circle Daybreak had managed to collect.

Damon sat down across from me at the table while I was reading and singing along to Video. I gave him a smile, not missing a beat of the song or my place on the page. Damon took a random page from the table, scanned it, then put it back, eyebrows raised in curiosity.

Taking on a murder case?

Uh huh. So are you. I replied simply, still reading.

I don't do goody-goody work for Circle Daybreak. He said almost sneering.

Get off your high horse Damon. You heard what Kendra said. Two people were murdered last night, by some unidentifiable people. I was still singing along to the CD, all while being brusque with Damon

Them's the breaks.

You're not funny in the least. Think of it this way, now we won't be, how'd you put it…Driving for hours to the middle of nowhere just so you can see the sun set. I quoted from the conversation we'd had the night before (when we were still coherent).

I did say that, didn't I?

Yup. After breakfast we're going to meet with a man named Sirius. Okay?

He gave a resigned mental sigh. Yea, one point to me, I win. He'd come, he'd help, and hell, he'd probably solve it…getting himself and others into near death situations while he was at it.

"Amori," Damon said aloud. "I think we should leave, we seem to be attracting some attention."

I looked up. Sure enough quite a few waiters were giving us curious glances. Oh well, I couldn't blame them. A seemingly seventeen-year-old girl was sitting like she didn't have a care in the world listening to her Walkman. A hot, slightly older guy who couldn't have possibly been her father or brother was sitting across from her. I was either looking like the poster child for school truancy or the spokes girl for slutsville, or both. I didn't care to be either one.

As we exited the dining area I handed the Walkman to the person standing at the doorway, and asked her to give them to Kendra when she came in. Only her first name was needed, everyone in the building knew who she was. It's part of the reason she hates it here.

"So who are we looking for?" Damon asked as we left the hotel. The sun was bright, and I shielded my eyes.

"Um…" I looked around carefully for the man we were to meet. "Right…there!"

The man I pointed to was leaning against the side of hotel by the valet booth. Sirius and Damon defiantly shared the same tastes when it came to clothes. Like Damon, Sirius was wearing tight black jeans that looked as if they'd been poured on. They both wore black tee shirts and black ray bands over their eyes. Sirius had on black boots that on closer inspection looked to be made out of some unknown hide. His hair was shoulder length and shaggy. It was tied back into a messy ponytail, and strands of hair were already escaping and framing his face. The main thing I noticed about him was his age, or supposed age. Physically he looked no older than twenty-five and if he really tried, and wanted to he could've passed for nineteen. But I knew he had to be older. He'd held Rowena when she was five, and that was in 1975. According to Kendra he'd been fourteen then and had had a fourteen year olds body. The picture confirmed this as well. With this in mind I was very careful while doing my customary light probing, I didn't want him to find out I was looking around. Fights have been started over less. All I did was look briefly as his magic, but it was amazing! At first waves of white magic swept my senses. There were layers and layers of it. But buried away at the bottom was a layer of dark magic. It was thin and almost transparent. I didn't look to find out why it was there. No, I'd trust Damon to do that. I wasn't going to start a power battle in the middle of the Vegas strip because I couldn't keep my curiosity under check, but my reckless, daredevil boyfriend would.

I heard Damon muttering to himself, and I could feel him doing some sort of magic. I waited before asking him what he was doing. You never interrupt someone doing magic, it can bring awful repercussions.

"What were you doing?"

Damon shrugged. "Just something between us vampires."

It took a few moments for what he'd said to truly register in my head. When it did, I gave him almost a nasty look. "Is everyone in this damned city a vampire? Witch? Or something of the sort?"

"We're certainly not the minority."

I jumped, giving a shriek. The new voice had startled me. When I turned I found Sirius standing next to Damon. People, myself included, tend to forget that vampires have preternatural speed. It's one of their few powers that doesn't need blood to support it. I quickly remembered that power when I saw Sirius, and cursed it vehemently in my mind.

"Sorry to have scared you." Sirius said, extending his hand. "Amori and Damon, correct?"

'You can calm down now' I told myself while shaking his hand and nodding. I wasn't looking for it but I noticed that he didn't have a lapis lazuli ring on either hand, and there was nothing around his neck. He only protected his eyes from the sun, and with all the black he was wearing he was certainly taking in more than reflecting it.

I smiled at him while looking for the old picture of him in the folder. "Listen, we were wondering if you would help us. This might seem awkward, but my friend gave me a folder this morning…"

Damon cleared his throat, interrupting me. "What Amori is saying is she picked up the murder case of Alex Redfern this morning and she was wondering if you help us solve it."  He's never been one to mince words. "We heard that you knew him."

"Alex?" I watched his face carefully; memories were passing through his eyes. "Yes, I knew him very well. Best friends for five years."

The way he said five years told me that he couldn't have been that old. Five years wouldn't have been that long to him if he were anywhere close to Damon's age. Five years was almost the blink of an eye to us if things were going normally.

"Can you help us?" I asked. I looked at his layers of magic again with my mind. Just the mention of Alex Redfern had thickened the black magic and made it try to come closer to the surface.

"I can try. I can give you the exact time of the murder, what his last words to us were," He gave a bitter laugh. "I can tell you exactly what the stake that pierced his heart felt like. So could Rowena."

Damon shuddered slightly at the mention of stakes and hearts. I was beginning to think that making Sirius relive this was not a good idea, but as soon as I did the disturbed look left his face and he looked up again. "How was Rowena involved?"

"Alex and I were Rowena's favorites that summer." He seemed thoughtful. "Maybe we should fetch her before finishing this discussion. Come on."

And he led us back towards the hotel.

*~*

I've never spent much time with Rowena so I'd never known if what Kendra said about her was true or if it was just natural sibling rivalry. After meeting and talking to her with Damon and Sirius I was seriously convinced that Kendra and Rowena needed to be forced to sit in a room together and solve whatever problem they had with each other, whether it was magic related or something else, because Rowena was perfectly nice. I think Kendra's just mad at her whole family, her mothers side at least.

We found Rowena just leaving the dining hall. She was holding a few sheets of yellowed paper that looked amazingly like… parchment!

"If you're looking for Kendra," she said when she saw us. "You just missed her. She went off with our cousin James. There was a murder last night, so they're probably gone for the day. Remus is supposed to meet them somewhere after he finishes up at Thierry's."

"We needed to talk to you actually." Sirius said. "Do you have the time?"

Rowena shook her head. "Not here, but if you want to swing by Thierry's with me I can talk with you after Remus and I are done." She gestured to the parchment. "It's this treaty. Circle Daybreak agreed to the original alliance awhile back, but the elders are in indecision. It's very annoying. This is the third time we've had to write this thing over."

"Maybe the fact that their citizens are being killed will help jog the process." Damon said darkly

"That's what I was thinking." Said Rowena. "Of course if it takes murders to convince them to sign a treaty that doesn't say much for their character. I'd better be going. If you're planning on coming you can follow me in your car."

*~*

(A/n- I hope you enjoyed it, please R/R, oh and, Aphrodite Black has uploaded. There's a new chapter up for No Turning back, and there's about to be another one.)